I’ll admit to a strange fascination with lists — best books, best habits, best anything — not because I believe them to be true, but because they offer such fascinating evidence of how a person or a group of people think about the world. Although, this particular list (at the very end of the article) of ”tips for living” by professional skeptic and complexity theorist Nassim Nicholas Taleb (author of The Black Swan), has some rather useful tidbits in the mix:
- Skepticism is effortful and costly. It is better to be skeptical about matters of large consequences, and be imperfect, foolish and human in the small and the aesthetic.
- Go to parties. You can’t even start to know what you may find on the envelope of serendipity. If you suffer from agoraphobia, send colleagues.
- It’s not a good idea to take a forecast from someone wearing a tie. If possible, tease people who take themselves and their knowledge too seriously.
- Wear your best for your execution and stand dignified. Your last recourse against randomness is how you act — if you can’t control outcomes, you can control the elegance of your behavior. You will always have the last word.
- Don’t disturb complicated systems that have been around for a very long time. We don’t understand their logic. Don’t pollute the planet. Leave it the way we found it, regardless of scientific ‘evidence’.
- Learn to fail with pride — and do so fast and cleanly. Maximize trial and error — by mastering the error part.
- Avoid losers. If you hear someone use the words ‘impossible’, ‘never’, ‘too difficult’ too often, drop him or her from your social network. Never take ‘no’ for an answer (conversely, take most ‘yeses’ as ‘most probably’).
- Don’t read newspapers for the news (just for the gossip and, of course, profiles of authors). The best filter to know if the news matters is if you hear it in cafes, restaurants… or (again) parties.
- Hard work will get you a professorship or a BMW. You need both work and luck for a Booker, a Nobel or a private jet.
- Answer e-mails from junior people before more senior ones. Junior people have further to go and tend to remember who slighted them.
[ Thanks to BoingBoing and their wonderful sources. ]
Designer Bruce Mau came up with a good list, which he calls “An Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.” I return to it often and just circulated it to my staff at The Studios of Key West. One of my favorite colleagues simply just came up and thanked me from her heart.
I’m not one for dogma and strict adherence to artificial mandates, but Bruce’s is a pretty good shopping list for Cultural Managers…proceeding from Beckett’s “Fail Better” all the way to Taleb’s “Avoid Losers”
http://www.brucemaudesign.com/manifesto.html
(I think you mentioned this un-manifesto in a posting a few years ago, but I thought it might deserve mention again)
To me number four is the most important point on this list. As a consumer I have come to believe that companies and organizations will occasionally inconvenience me. However, what is most important to me is not that they have inconvenienced me but rather how they deal with the situation.
For example, one time when I was flying with Southwest Airlines one of my bags was destroyed. The bag was unusable, as were many articles of clothing inside the bag. The accident was completely the airline’s fault and definitely could have been avoided. However, they were so helpful in replacing my destroyed bag and compensating me for my other belongings that I continue to fly with Southwest to this day. If they had done a poor job handling the situation I never would have flown with them again.
This extends into the art world. Sometimes things will go wrong. Sometimes a show will be canceled or equipment won’t arrive on time. Whether or not a situation could have been avoided is important in the evaluation process; however, don’t worry about that until you have remedied the situation in the best possible way. If you handle the situation with grace and dignity, your actions to fix the situation are what your audience, consumers, and other contacts will remember in the long run.
Point # 5 is essential the philosophical stance of British philosopher Edmund Burke, one of my personal favourites. I think it is a good thing to take into consideration before any of us assume we know all the answers to fixing a problem. In all likely hood there is a very good reason most things are the way they are.
Point 2 stands out to me because you might not ever know what surprises you may find unless you put yourself out there. Fate generally has a hand in things if you allow it to happen. If one is too fearful to take the chance and sends someone else, they may be forfeiting possible opportunities.
Point #3 stuck a chord with me. One of my favorite quotes from Oscar Wilde is, “Seriousness is the only refuge of the shallow.” Knowing when to be serious and when complete stony-faced tension is inappropriate is essential to keeping good working relationships with people. Coming from a family of comedians, I appreciate when my colleagues can look at a situation or approach an idea with a sense of humor. It makes things easier to deal with. Of course, humor is not always appropriate, and finding the right balance can be difficult. However, I still think life is too short to take yourself too seriously.